She pushed some papers aside so we could sit at the kitchen table. I didn’t know what to say, but I did manage not to ask her how come she lived in Joe Simpson’s house. I could see that she thought I’d sought her out as some kind of cry for help, so I went along with it, and we talked about my dad.

‘He hasn’t even tried to get in touch,’ I said. ‘I’d never tell Sasha this, but I sent him an email a while ago, on Mum’s anniversary. He ignored it. He knows his grandchild is due in less than three months. He tried to take me out of school to move to Scotland with him, but he hasn’t even written back. I don’t care because we’re better off without him, but still. He knows we lost our mum. He doesn’t give a shit, does he?’

I found that I was crying, but they were tears of anger, of frustration.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Ms Duke passed me three chocolate digestive biscuits on a plate. ‘He doesn’t deserve you girls. That’s a huge understatement. I suppose people respond to loss differently, but everything he’s done is a textbook “how not to”. You and Sasha are doing great, Ariel.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. I meant it more than I could say. Ms D was brilliant. I had no idea how to ask when she’d moved here, and where the previous owner had gone, so I said, ‘This is a nice house. Have you lived here long?’

‘Twelve years or so,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t feel long to me, but for you, of course, that’s most of your life.’

I stood up as soon as I finished my tea and a fourth biscuit. There was a pile of exercise books next to me and I knew she needed to get back to work, that I had massively overstepped by showing up here.

As I was saying thanks there was the sound of a key in the front door. I looked round.

‘That’ll be my husband,’ Ms Duke said. ‘Don’t worry. He’s tame.’ She called out. ‘Darling! I have a visitor.’

It had never really occurred to me that Ms Duke might have had a husband, in spite of the rumours about her many marriages. I checked her hand. She did wear a wedding ring. I’d never looked. I felt super, super awkward.

‘Hello!’ called a man’s voice. ‘A visitor, hey?’

Then he was in the kitchen with us, kissing Ms Duke on the lips, and turning to me with a smile, his arm round her waist, and my blood was pounding and my legs were wobbling, and I had to focus so intently on trying to look normal that I didn’t hear what he said at first.

He was shorter than I would have expected.